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Our Database Services

New Database Design

All businesses plan to succeed and this mentality needs to be applied to the design of any systems that are put in place.

The key to a stable and scalable Microsoft Access solution is the design of the database. It is vital that this is carefully planned and developed with growth, flexibility and ease of use in mind.

We have many years’ experience in working with all levels of business to help them create a fully optimised database design on which they can successfully build their systems and processes. We analyse the business model and work with your team to ensure the screens and reports we produce for them are easy to use and provide information in an accurate and timely manner.

We also design systems with flexibility in mind. All businesses change over time so its vital that the systems we create for them can be easily and economically adapted to accommodate this.

Obviously the beauty of a bespoke system is that whilst there is some outlay for the design and development ultimately the system is designed to save you money. The more automation you can build into your business the less you have to spend on pure manual labour overhead. Usually the most expensive overhead in a business.

Support for existing Access Solutions

The beauty of Microsoft Access is that it’s very easy to produce a system that gives you results quickly. This is perfect when things are very simple. However these types of systems can soon grow out of control and then become more of a burden than a help. Data can become inconsistent or even lost altogether.

We can take existing systems and update them to make them optimised for your business again. Build in flexibility and scalability and ensure the data is captured in an accurate and more efficient way. This should help speed up the database and keep errors to an absolute minimum.

It might be that your very happy with your existing system but simply need a little more complexity adding. Again we can help you with this.

Another area of support is helping you get a consistent platform for your Microsoft Access Solution. There are numerous versions of Access still out there. These can all create slightly different issues if they are all mixed into your working environment. We can perform an audit of these different versions and provide advice on how best to streamline them.

We are happy to work on-site or remotely as either way works well.

Upgrading from Excel

Usually a business’s first approach to data collection is using Excel worksheets. They are very easy to set-up and are a simple way of storing standard lists of information. This might be a customer contact list or a product inventory. These work well in the early days and can even be linked to a certain extent.

However problems will soon develop when the worksheets grow large, get more complex or require many users to have access to them. Adding other processes such as Sales Order Processing becomes difficult.

In the end the system become too unwieldy, slow and prone to errors. Multi use is very difficult and the limits of Excel start to be reached.

This is the time to review the system and consider an upgrade to a Microsoft Access Solution. The Benefits of using are database can be found here (link to Why a database?) and why Microsoft Access here(link to why Access?).

AccessDBDesign can analyse your Excel creations and map them into an optimised and efficient Access Solution which solves the problems of further growth capability, Multi user lockouts and relationships between functional areas of the business.

Upsizing to SQL

Microsoft Access is the product to design and develop your database. It has relational and multi user capabilities. The screens give you the ability to create user friendly ways to capture consistent and accurate data.

An Access solution can be split into 2 distinct parts:

The Screens,Queries, Reports, Macros and Code – Usually referred to as the Front End

Data and relationships – Usually referred to as the Back End.

When a standard Microsoft Access Solution outgrows the amount of complexity, users and size then this ability to split the database provides a route to upsizing the Data (Back End) to a more enterprise level. This route takes you to Microsoft SQL.

Splitting and upsizing an Access solution doesn’t mean you are starting from scratch again. The upsizing path ensures that the front end screens, reports etc can stay pretty much intact. Its only the data that is moved to SQL and again this is not a ‘from scratch’ move. Upsizing tools are available that can help move the database with the lease amount of pain possible. SQL then gives you a number of significant advantages: